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17
It was all Lucas could do to keep from banging his head against the steering wheel. But he was driving and had spent the latter part of the evening spectacularly modeling how to completely lose self-control.
Now was not the time to succumb to losing his mind, but to regain it.
The problem was, he was falling. Hard.
In his mind, the way to distance from people and be immune to ever losing them, was to remain calm and collected and unmoved by their mere presence. Easier said than done. Tonight anyway.
The woman, with whom he had just spent the evening doing the opposite with, a devil of a woman who could be within a ten-mile-radius, causing his Birdie-radar to spring in sync with his raging dick, was complicated.
Also complicated was his relationship with Mia. Who was a really great kid. One who under different circumstances, and baby mama, he would have loved being close to.
The truth was, Mia was intrinsically tied to Birdie and if he ever had a chance of being a good father to her, he had to figure out how to avoid his feelings for her mother.
If he could just figure that out, he would allow himself to love Mia. He would risk adding another person inside his relationship bubble. But just one. Because the thought of adding her mother to that delicate sphere made his anxiety increase tenfold. Therefore, Mia was in, but Birdie was out. It had to be that way.
Earlier, when Birdie mentioned his daughter being charmed by him, he couldn’t deny the feeling of his chest tumbling and falling with a monumental amount of joy. He pictured himself with a ludicrous grin on his face as he continued to topple and plummet, blissfully unaware of slamming into boulders and trees and other impediments.
If he could just remain hyper-vigilant, maybe he could avoid the hazards that would likely come of loving his daughter.
To his surprise, Mia wanted to be around him. He was finding that spending time with her became less daunting, not as much about losing something he couldn’t articulate and more about gaining something precious and immensely worthwhile.
It wasn’t until his jaw began to ache that he realized he was smiling. Inanely. The happiness he was feeling attributable to the daughter who hung on every word he said as if he hung the moon. Who wanted to protect animals by refusing to eat them and unapologetically shared her passion about that. She was so much like him but infinitely better.
Ominous tentacles attempted to twist themselves around his heart until he felt the constriction of loving someone so much that the only feeling to ever exceed it, would have been losing them.
Ironically, the tentacles failed to hold. Because as far as he was concerned, he was all-in when it came to Mia. But those tentacles could just as quickly asphyxiate him when contemplating her bothersome mother.
He pictured her earlier at the station with her chest out and her nipples straining against the thin material of her T-shirt, begging to be licked and pinched into submission.
He couldn’t deny his desire to dominate her. To finally stop her smart mouth and saucy comebacks and her ever prominent need for self-destruction.
It was wrong the things he wanted to do to her. Had to be. But he couldn’t deny how much he wanted her to break down and submit to him.
As much as he wanted to be a meaningful part of Mia’s life, he could never allow himself Birdie.
She would forever be his kryptonite.
Funny how at one time he’d considered her his lodestone. His North Star. He had learned his lesson. After years of watching her self-destruct with otherworldly finesse, he had thought she’d finally snuffed his will to protect her at all cost.
Make no mistake about it, the two of them together was a lost cause. One he couldn’t afford to pick up and run with. Because she had proved so many times in the past, she’d only dig her heels in, bringing him down with her. It was inevitable.
Besides, he had already suffered losing her once, there was no way he could survive losing her a second time.
Parking the car in front of the garage, he walked up the front porch steps, not noticing the shadow sitting on the porch swing until it coughed.
The Chief.
“What are you doing out here in the dark?” he asked, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe.
“The bugs were swarming with the lights on so I turned them off.”
“Those lights are supposed to be an eternal flame, they don’t go out.”
“I’m a career firefighter, Lucas. My job in life is to extinguish flames and to bring fire to heel.”
Lucas sat on the rattan chair facing the porch swing and stretched his legs out in front of him, listening to the night sounds of the leopard frogs whose chuckling sound could be described as the rubbing of an inflated balloon. A sound that could be disruptive when mating season was in full force and the frogs in a hormonal frenzy. Tonight, was a mild one in terms of reptilian sexual activities, the sound more calming than annoying.
